Enough Thunder
by aufbau
Summary: You decide that after a lifetime of fighting to exist, you prefer living between the boy and his bedsheets.


I'm having really bad writers block rn and it shows towards the end of this

Warnings for violence and tiny kissies

zzz

You were slung over the boy's shoulders like a trophy, big game whose pelt was soaked with rainwater. He almost dropped you twice, once as he held you up with one hand to open the door to his house and once as he walked up the stairs, your ankles dragging over each carpeted step.

It was pure chance that he found you curled up beneath the deck of some nameless convenience store with a hole in your chest and a deep cut that split your shoulder blades. You had been ready to die alone, all of your animal instincts telling you to curl up and let life leave you through your toes and your fingertips. Most of you was already gone when you heard cursing and saw orange, two hands with red knuckles pulling you out of your coffin. You wish he had left you behind.

"Can you hear me? Are you conscious?" It sounded like he was speaking from the bottom of a well, but you managed a fraction of a nod. You felt him peel off what was left of your jacket and his warm hands on your chest, trying to wash away the blood from the wound. You let him do as he pleased(not that you could have stopped him.) Through sheer willpower, you managed to stay awake until he started stitching you back together. By then, you were too numb and cold to feel the needle sliding through your skin. You heard the boy protest when you let your head fall back and closed your eyes, telling you to wake up and stay awake. His voice was so far away, like it was in the ground and you were up in the air.

The last blurry image you see is his face, and that fades to nothing fast. You have a dreamless sleep.

Zzz

You wake up eventually and feel grounded again. You spend most of your recovery staring out the shinigami's window, sleeping in his bed while he sleeps on the floor. He's too good, too giving. You don't know how he expects to win wars when he can't kill his enemies. When he can't even kill a cat.

One day, he asks you how you got injured as he changes your bandages. You don't answer, but rather you rest your forehead on his shoulder and close your eyes. Things are just easier this way.

You stay with him months after you're healed. He never questions it. He was always a smart kid.

You begin sneaking into his futon and sleeping next to him, the river of bad dreams that rushes through your head proving too much to bear alone. Sometimes, he's awake, and he asks you questions that you give quiet answers to until one of you falls asleep.

"Are there stars in Hueco Mundo?"

"Once, there was. A long time ago."

"Do you remember being alive?"

"Sort of."

"Have you always had blue hair?"

"I wish."

"Do you still want to kill me?"

"If I wanted to, I would have done it by now."

"What do you want then?"

You think hard before answering.

"All this, and everything else that will ruin me."

He kissed you after that one, slowly and carefully and barely touching your lips to his. It's the nicest thing you've felt since he held your hand after running you through with his sword, lying you to rest on the pale sand in Las Noches.

You sleep better after that, and in the bed instead of on the floor. Of course, the boy sleeps with you.

There is a certain art to the way he sleeps, his face relaxed and his chin tilted up to the ceiling. Usually he breathes through his nose, soft deep breaths that lift his chest and fill his lungs. Sometimes, on rainy days, he'll breathe through his mouth, lips just barely parted and each exhale a small sigh. Sometimes you dream of him sleeping, of his rising stomach and how he curls into you on cold nights like he's forgotten completely about how the last time you two were close like this, your hand was inside his shoulder and you intended on ripping his heart from his chest.

You decide that after a lifetime of fighting to exist, you prefer living between the boy and his bedsheets.

zzzz

"What is your report?"

Aizen smirks at you and you already know that he knows. Aizen knows everything, so it doesn't phase you. You're used to this game.

"Grimmjow, do you plan on giving me an answer?"

The hairs on your neck stand as he raises his spiritual pressure to press down on your back. You hold your ground and stay quiet. You would rather be forced to your knees than to tell him about Kurosaki and the way his shoulders shake when he tries to hold back his laughs, how he still fights like an honorable man even after he got that demon's mask. How he hates the cold but also hates knitted sweaters and that it would be rather easy to kill him, he's too trusting and relaxed for his own good.

Aizen already knew Kurosaki would give his skin to someone who needed it more, no matter the circumstance. He had always been like that. It's what made him a hero and you an animal. It's also why the trap Aizen had made worked so well, why your blood as bait drew him in like a vulture that one rainy day almost a year ago. You remember how he held your wrists with care and he was never trying to save you so you could be a prisoner of war; he really, truly wanted you to live.

You keep your mouth shut and let Aizen press you into the earth.

zzzz

Ichigo Kurosaki is at his desk when you come crashing through his window, leaving a screaming trail of blood as you tumble and slide across his floor. You don't bother with picking the glass out of your skin, you're almost in two pieces anyways. A few cuts never hurt anyone.

You push Ichigo's hands away when he tries to help you up, spitting blood from your red mouth and grabbing him by the front of his shirt.

"Get the fuck out of here," you snarl.

"Aizen's coming and he's going to kill you."

Watching the emotions play across his face is like watching a movie, panic and confusion flitting from scene to scene across the planes of his lips and the deep ovals of his eyes.

"How did he get here? How do you know? Shit Grimm, you're bleeding everywhere…."

The pain on his face is soft and wet when you stand and give him your hardest and most poisonous glare. Your fraccion had told you passion would be your downfall, and they were right. You poured too much of yourself into that boy and now you lived between the spaces of his teeth and in the corners of his eyes, in the bends of his knees and on his pale, flat stomach.

You made yourself feral, as far from being the person he thought you were as possible. You needed him to live and you needed him to leave you behind.

"I betrayed you, dumbass. I've been reporting to Aizen. That one day? When you found me? A trap."

The words are a toxin on your tongue and you wonder if this is what snakes feel like when they kill their prey, all of the fangs and the heat and the ache in your heart as you watch something inside Kurosaki fall and break. Tearing yourself out of him rips both of you apart.

He bites his lip and looks down at the floor before drawing his gaze back up to you, his eyes burning with that same persistent intensity as when he first fought you. You pretend you don't see that he's crying and focus instead on the parting gift Aizen gave you. That part isn't hard. You don't even know how you're still standing with all the blood that's running down your legs and pooling at your feet. You're used to violence and licking wounds but this might as well have been a death sentence.

"He'll kill you." Kurosaki's voice draws you back to the present, quiet and tight.

"He'll kill you if he finds you here instead of me."

"I should have died a long time ago, boy. I doubt he would spare me regardless." You gesture to the valley between your left shoulder and hip with your right arm. You can't feel the left one and it dangles off of you like a hanged man.

"If you leave now, you can make it to the soul society." You cough out the words "soul society". More blood. Your throat feels like you swallowed a forest fire.

He crosses his arms, that famous stubbornness shining through at the worst possible moment.

"Not without you."

The shimmering of the air and the distortion of the sky signals Aizen's entrance. You figure you have less than a minute until he finds the boy and whatever's left of you. Ichigo senses it too and stiffens. Like you said, he was a smart kid.

"I can distract him. You leave." 

Everything hurts and each extra second of consciousness is a struggle. You let yourself fall, knowing that either Kurosaki will catch you or you'll hit the ground and hopefully end up dead. Anything that will convince him to leave you.

You feel a warmth. Kurosaki's arms, his hands. Those damn hands. That damn heart he had, all of it too much for you. Moving. Kurosaki moving. Kurosaki making you breakfast, bacon and eggs that were just barely burned. Walking with Kurosaki in the park. Getting your first good night's sleep in years and dreaming about when you were alive. Opening your eyes and seeing orange hair. Learning how to live as something more than a predator or a mercenary. Pulling Kurosaki in close when it was cold. Watching Kurosaki do homework. Sparring with Kurosaki, your swords bright in the moonlight. Lying on rooftops with Kurosaki and

zzzzz

Consciousness drips into you like a leaky gutter, an ebb and flow of dull aches and charcoal darkness. Everything comes back to you slowly, then quickly.

Running from Aizen.

Being dropped through a portal by Kurosaki.

More running.

Kurosaki crying.

Blacking out.

You cracked your eyes open and the first thing you noticed was that the pain was all but gone. You felt your chest with two tentative fingers and learned you were in one piece again. All of the blood and sweat and desperation that stuck to you when you fell through Ichigo's window wasn't there, washed off.

"Are you awake?"

Ichigo's voice is soft, almost scared. You don't know if he's afraid of you being awake or asleep.

"Sort of." Your throat feels dry and smarts when you swallow. You tilt your eyes to the boy and watch as he lays his head on your stomach. It takes most of your self control to not shudder. His hair tickles the exposed edges of your recent wound and the old scar that still laid like the Mariana Trench across your chest, the first thing he ever gave you besides emotion and spark. Even now, the light touch feels like he's dragging his nails across that scar, it's so sensitive. You don't ask him to move. You've been through worse things than a boy trusting you.

"Is this a habit of yours," He starts, shifting his head to get comfortable.

"Showing up fatally wounded when I least expect it?"

You let the air out of your chest and close your eyes. Even if you're conscious, the room still shifts and bends, and sometimes you see one and a half heads of orange hair.

"I'm trying not to make it one, though I don't really have a say in the matter. I like my ribs more when they're inside me."

Ichigo chuckled quietly and turned his head so he could look at me.

"So do I."

He curls his body over yours and you feel the rise and fell of his chest on your bicep. You watch him close his eyes and give a small sigh. Ichigo breathes in one more time, his face pressed into the curves of your chest so hard it leaves the imprint of bandages on his cheek. You wonder if this is what Renaissance paintings look like, a beautiful man with his body draped over a slain beast or a maiden with his eyebrows quirked like he's about to laugh or cry.

You bring his hand to your mouth and brush your lips over his knuckles, tasting sweat and youth layered heavily on the skin. God, you can't get enough of the boy.

You close your eyes as well and let your head fall back.


End file.
